My Brightest Diamond

In early April, before the near-universal acclaim for Portishead's Third had started pouring in, the most striking thing about the impending album was the fact that their music was still alive at all so many years after Dummy. The existence of My Brightest Diamond is arguably even better proof of that, though: songwriter Shara Worden has been most successful as one of Sufjan Steven's supporting musicians, but her solo work sometimes delves into the same melding of electronics and melancholy which defined Bristol trip-hop in the early 1990s, often with crashing guitars and light orchestral flourishes taking the place of the soul-searching minimalism.

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I really hope this one gets a good turnout, because her albums are excellent. "A Thousand Shark's Teeth" is on my short list for best of '08, for sure, but my favorite is still the original version of "Golden Star". I first heard it a couple years back in the Blacksburg equivalent of Atomic Burrito and promptly spilled pico de gallo all over myself.

Yeah, we did an interview. I wasn't at the Gravity show but I did catch another show on this tour and was surprised by the lineup of her band -- there were more string players than regular rock band instruments, which seems strange because she relies pretty heavily on both.